http://www.thegoldandoilguy.com/articles/choppy-sp500-gold-stock-meltdown-and-dollar-strengthens/

Jan 20th, 2010
For the past few weeks I have been expecting the market to correct. By looking at the price action on the weekly and daily charts we can see that there has not been any real pullback since November and that is important to note. Without regular market corrections stocks start to become over bought meaning everyone has/is buying them and no real sellers have jumped off the trend. So when the price in an over bought market starts to slide lower we generally see everyone rush to hit their sell buttons. This is what causes the high volume breakdowns similar to the GLD (Gold) breakdown last December.
Another way of getting a feel for the market to know if it is over bought is to look at market sentiment for bulls vs. bears (buyers vs. sellers). Currently almost everyone is bullish and with this high of a reading we must start protecting our positions by tightening stops and/or get ready to play the coming correction with a short term trading strategy.
We can add another level of analysis to assist our understanding of the market if we look at the 60 minute charts of the SPY & IBM.
The chart below of the SPY (SP500) clearly shows we are in choppy times. With the majority of investors buying up stocks left, right and center because they are bullish on both the economy and individual companies, we have continued to see the index crawl higher. This has been going on for almost 3 months now but the more recent price action in the SPY chart clearly shows there are some BIG sellers unloading positions into this buying pressure. When the big sellers slow their selling we see the price drift back up until selling kicks back in. This is a warning signal for lower prices in the coming days.
The IBM chart shows a perfect example of the ‘Buy on the Rumor – Sell on the News’ saying we all know. The share price of IBM ran up into their earning news as traders know IBM is great for beating estimates. Once the great news came out which actually beat the estimates, the price sold off. This is happening everywhere with stocks.
In short, the market looks top heavy and has also rallied into earning season. These two points really have me on edge for taking a long trade at the moment.

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